


The Kids

by beargirl1393



Series: Hayffie Week [2]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, de-aged katniss, de-aged peeta, questionable science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 05:16:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4653768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beargirl1393/pseuds/beargirl1393
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katniss and Peeta are temporarily turned into children because of a Capitol doctor with a grudge against the Mockingjay. Who else could take care of them but Effie and Haymitch?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kids

“What the hell?” Haymitch asked, not for the first time that day.

“Language,” Effie chided, as she had each time he’d cursed. “I don’t want the children exposed to such foul language. Honestly, Haymitch, you should be setting a better example.”

Normally, he would have laughed. Peeta and Katniss had both heard and seen worse over the years than anything he could say or do.

Today, however…

Today Katniss was wearing a fluffy dress that Effie had pulled out of the attic, while watching Effie cut, pin, and then sew an outfit for Peeta out of the fabric she had bought to make herself a new dress.

Of course, that had been the plan before Katniss and Peeta had been turned into four year olds.

A Capitol doctor with a grudge against the new administration and an experimental drug that he wasn’t sure that even the doctor had understood fully, combined with the desire for revenge against the Mockingjay, resulted in this.

He still didn’t understand it fully, admittedly, the technical doctor jargon was beyond him, as he rarely bothered seeing a doctor at all. All he knew was that, until the drug wore off, he and Effie were taking care of two troublemaking four year olds, who had previously been their pain in the ass teenaged, basically adopted, kids.

It had to be them, Effie was firm on that point, not that he had protested. The boy’s family was dead, so Peeta would have had nowhere else to go, and as for Katniss…Aster had asked for updates, but she had sworn to never come back to Twelve and it’s many memories. If she wouldn’t come back when her daughter was falling apart over Prim’s death, she wasn’t going to come back and play mother a third time. Everyone had their way to cope, and it appeared that Aster was coping by pretending that she didn’t have a daughter still here who needed her.

He and Effie had been caring for the kids for so long, they didn’t even consider sending them away, in truth. If Aster had wanted to care for Katniss, she would have had to come back to Twelve to do it, since they weren’t going to send her or Peeta away and into the dubious care of someone who checked out more often than not.

That didn’t mean that it was easy, by any means.

Effie had never been around any child under the age of twelve who wasn’t a Capitol citizen and thus a ‘perfect gentleman’ or ‘proper lady’. She seemed surprised that they weren’t sitting still and drinking tea, a couple of living statues in fashionable clothes.

Apparently, that was how most Capitol children were trained to behave, seen but not heard, not allowed to run around or consider getting their clothes dirty.

He noticed that she didn’t reprimand them when they got their clothes dirty or went outside to play, and although she would scold them for running in the house, there was an underlying fondness that she couldn’t quite hide.

Later, she confessed that her mother had expected her to be nothing more than a living china doll, pretty and quiet but with perfect manners when addressed. She wasn’t allowed to run and play, or do anything that would muss her clothes or hair. She had to be perfectly well-behaved, even when she longed for something else. She wouldn’t impose that on Peeta and Katniss, even if they were only going to be children in truth for a short time.

She wanted to try to ensure that, during this second childhood, they had everything that they hadn’t been able to have the first time around, whether because of poverty or their parents.

Haymitch, for his part, half-expected everything to go to hell within the first hour. He hadn’t been around kids that young in years, since before he was a Victor, and had about as much of an idea of how to take care of them as Effie did. At least he was a better cook, so they wouldn’t starve to death before they changed back and the boy could bake again.

He also, although he never told Effie, had asked Greasy Sae for advice. She had known him when he was only a child, and she had children and grandchildren of her own, so she was the only person that he would ask. She’d given him advice, as well as laughed at him when he was ‘overreacting’, according to her, so he was at least reasonably confident that they wouldn’t screw up the kids too badly.

Still, when he saw Peeta cuddled up to Effie on the couch for a story, or when Katniss pleaded with him to take her into the forest so she could run around, he thought that they might actually make it.

The kids each clearly had a favorite, unsurprisingly. Peeta trailed after Effie like a puppy, helping her clean the house, going with her to the market, and just generally following her as she went about her day. Although he’d seen the boy using puppy eyes to con one of the venders into giving him sweets, so he wasn’t sure how selfless it really was.

Katniss, on the other hand, spent most of her time with him. They would go out into the woods, the girl wandering around and pointing out the plants she knew and asking about the ones she didn’t. At that age, Katniss was almost cute, and Effie continually tried to dress her up in her old clothes. He and the girl usually beat a hasty retreat whenever Effie mentioned fashion, leaving little Peeta to her tender mercies.

Still, things could have gone worse, and he was actually reasonably sure that they would make it until the drugs wore off.

And, if the sultry little smirks and whispered promises helped to get him through the day with less alcohol, well, the kids were sound sleepers like this and they had practice keeping quiet.

They’d make it through…and he would have an album full of pictures as blackmail material once the kids were grown again.


End file.
